Doug Arthurs wrote:

nice as his old one. Couple weeks later he got tired of having it take
up space in the garage and asked me to just come and take it away. I did
and after rebuilding all the worn parts on the cutting deck and filling
up the hydro-static drive with oil and ended up with a great running
machine.

About ten years ago I had to repair a riding mower (parts were no longer
available) or buy a new one for a couple grand. I felt I would rather
buy a
lathe than a mower and fix the mower. I'd been wanting my own lathe for
a
looooooong time. I mentioned this to my neighbour who pulled out an
experimental/homebuilt airplane mag and showed me a Smithy add. This
would
give me a lathe AND a mill for about what I expected to pay for a
lathe. My
wife pointed out that if we got the Smithy, I could go to a proffesional
machine shop for the odd job that was too big/fine/accurate/whatever for
my
own machine. If this happened more than a couple of times, I could
always
sell the Smithy and get something bigger/better. I bought the Smithy in
'91 or
'92 (forget which) - haven't been to the pro shop yet.

Ted